Wednesday
Jul 22, 1998
03:45 PM PDT
Introduction |Mid-East Rights | Legislative Activism | Direct Action & Civil Disobedience | Media Campaign
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July/Aug. 1998 (1419 A.H.) - Issue #2
Myths about the Iraqi Opposition:
Subject: Kurds Against Bombing
Don't torture my people like this
The infrastructure, from the sewage to the
electricity systems, remains in ruins
By Laith Hayali
The Guardian Saturday December 19, 1998
There is no rational basis for believing that the
current bombardment of Iraq will either achieve the objectives set by
the American and British governments or solve the problems of the
Iraqi people. Indeed there is every likelihood that once a halt is
called to these vicious attacks, Saddam Hussein will still be in power
and will still have stocks of chemical and biological weapons. On that
basis alone, this use of force is excessive and cannot be justified.
As an Iraqi political exile - who operated with the
Kurdish Pesh Mergas and anti-Saddam resistance inside Iraq in the
1980s and helped found the solidarity committee Cardri - I need no
lessons in the nature of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime, particularly
from those in the West who backed him in the past. Friends and
comrades of mine have been tortured and executed in his jails and I
have been forced to live abroad.
I am also convinced that Iraq must be rid of chemical
and biological weapons, because there is always the potential that at
some point in the future this kind of regime might use them against
its own people or its neighbours. But even the British Foreign
Secretary has admitted that the bombing will not bring about their
elimination.
The basis of the onslaught is said to be the report
of the Unscom weapons inspectors, who are supposed to be under the
control of the United Nations.
But the Anglo-American attack began when the ink was
scarcely dry on William Butler's report - given to President Clinton
days before Kofi Annan was permitted to see it - without allowing the
UN Security Council the chance to discuss either the report or
consider any alternative response. Action on this scale demands broad
international support, which simply does not exist.
Iraq is already on its knees militarily and - as will
be clear from the primitive means now being used against the aerial
attacks - has no real chance of defending itself. The entire
infrastructure of the country, from the sewage to the electricity
systems, remains in ruins from the merciless and utterly
disproportionate bombardment during the Gulf War. The destruction of
buildings housing various branches of Saddam's military and security
machine will not destroy those institutions themselves. But innocent
people are being unjustifiably killed and maimed in the process.
Any possible solution to the problems of Iraq and its
relations with the rest of the world will depend on political change
inside the country.
But - as has become clear to me from regular contact
with people in Iraq - the more Iraqis are subjected to aerial assault
and the grinding effect of sanctions, the more they tend to see the
main threat to them as coming from the actions of foreign powers, and
look for a safe haven with the regime, rather than seeking to
overthrow it.
People in the West should not kid themselves that
Iraqis find any justification in sanctions, which reduce them to
misery - struggling to live and selling their personal belongings
to survive - while those in charge of the country are unaffected.
Nor does political change in Iraq simply mean
replacing Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath regime with a regime based on the
existing opposition, which is deeply divided on ethnic and religious
lines, largely undemocratic in its internal operation, heavily
infiltrated by Saddam's agents and increasingly dependent on western
funding and support. The danger of direct foreign involvement in Iraqi
politics is that it will not end with a change of regime, but continue
to tie Iraq to the oil-driven strategic aims of the United States in
the Middle East.
What is needed instead is a shift of UN policy
towards united international pressure on Iraq to open up its political
system and allow the re-emergence of genuine home-grown political
forces in the country. Even modest moves in that direction would begin
to create the conditions for normalisation of Iraq's relations with
the rest of the world. The risk of current US-British policy is that
even if it were eventually to dislodge Saddam's regime, the price paid
by the people of Iraq - as was the case in Afghanistan- could be
disastrously and inhumanly high.
Laith Hayali is an Iraqi political exile based in
London.
Note: Mashriq, a Shi'a Rights Organization, endorses the territorial
integrity of Iraq. The consensus is that the bombing of Iraq is an act
of aggression. A nation does not go to war against an individual, such
as Saddam Hussein, a nation goes to war against all the peoples within
it's borders. Thus an attack against Iraq is an attack against Kurds,
Shi'a and all persons in Iraq. We point out, again, Ayatollah Hakim of
SCIRI has called for the removal of the US from internal Iraqi
matters.
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